Workout of the week: Soma Fit

Instructor: Brenna Backe, owner of Soma Fit Studio, has a bachelor's in exercise science and is a certified American Council on Exercise personal trainer since 2003. She designs rehab programs with physical therapy studios for people with neck, back, hip, shoulder, ankle and knee pain and people before and after surgery.

Backe developed the Core Class for Low Back Pain.

The studio opened in September. She's been working with physical therapists for 13 years and has been a coach/trainer for 25 years. She ran a studio in New Jersey before moving to Boulder.

What is the workout? Corrective exercise and functional movement training. The goal: Get the body moving as efficiently as possible to increase range of motion, promote the most muscle activation and thereby create more strength and power.

Corrective exercise refers to re-educating the body to move more efficiently and correct muscle imbalances (which ultimately can lead to injury, pain and limited performance). For example, you improve the flexibility of tight muscles, strengthen weak ones and mobilize "stuck" areas. Then you can begin functional movement training, which refers to the movements we do in our daily lives (such as getting out of a chair). Functional training teaches all parts of the body to work together.

Backe believes muscle balances leads to efficiency in movement, which leads to more power, strength, stability and injury prevention.

Soma Fit also offers nutritional consulting, too.

During my session, we started with an assessment, where she watched me walk and examined the patterns of my body. She then offered me stretches and exercises to open up and unglue the things that were stuck, and strengthen and fire up the muscles that are turned off.

"Once we get you stabilized, we move it into more functional patternings," Backe says.

With many other functional fitness offerings, she says, people aren't getting balanced and doing the corrective movements before they learn the functional exercises.

"When people start out just doing push and pulls, but they're already in a bad pattern, if it even stops, it takes a really long time to retrain the body," she says. "Whereas if you can isolate what you want, it takes about a week to a month and that's it to retrain those patterns, and then you can go for it."

Traditional weight-training and strengthening is usually repetitious and only strengthens certain muscles, which can lead to injury and tightness. Unlike Backe's classes, it does not work the connective tissue and stabilizing muscles, as well.

What does it cost? First session is free. After that, Backe offers various packages. An individual session is $75. Right now, she is offering a weight-loss special: $199 for four 60-minute sessions and one 60-minute nutritional session.

When: Backe offers private lessons, small group lessons and occasional workshops and specific classes. For example, in October she ran a six-week ski and snowboard training series. Check her website for schedules or contact her to book a private lesson.

Level: Most clients are athletes and active adults who want to improve performance, avoid injury or continue doing what they enjoy without pain. She has worked with athletic teams, individuals, skiers, bikers, dancers, runners and climbers.

Backe has also worked with weight-loss clients (including people who lost more than 100 pounds), and she says her boot camps boast an average weight loss of 91/2 pounds.

Most clients are between 45 and 65 years old.

"If you have a trauma and you're 29, it may hurt for a few days and you recover, but it may lock up your hips," Backe says. "It can start binding up that area and then shift the whole leg. So five years later, you get a meniscus tear. The tear came because you had a rotation through your knee."

What to prepare: Comfortable, form-fitting clothes (so she can see your movements).

"We do a lot of moves where you use multiple muscle groups, so it's a higher calorie burn than just doing standing strength training," Backe says.

What I loved: The increased body awareness and the stretches to loosen up my tight areas. They were intense and deep, but I felt an immediate and significant difference and I left feeling like I'd had a massage. I also like the personalized suggestions (Backe sent me an e-mail later reminding me which exercises to do at home). I could feel that my body needed and appreciated those exercises, and there's no question that I will do them regularly at home -- especially the stretches on the foam roller.

What I didn't like: It might be challenging for some people to step back, slow down and be patient enough to reprogram these tiny body patterns. Some people might get too eager to want to see big changes and leave dripping in sweat, but the truth is, it's hard to achieve lasting big (safe) changes without first making small ones.

I personally enjoyed this kind of detailed work -- but maybe that's because I've been seriously injured before, and I know how much harder it is to have to start from a place of injury than simply be smart and prevent it in the first place.

How I felt after the class: Thirsty, self-aware and balanced.

-- Reported by Aimee Heckel.

Know of any interesting workouts? Tell us about them so we can check them out: heckela@dailycamera.com or 303-473-1359.

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